(…) It started 18 years ago. I saw a documentary about a transsexual and it was like an epiphany. I knew it was going to save my life. I had to do everything on my own. There wasn’t even the internet when I was going through it. I had to go to bookshops and look for books on transsexuals. Finding a doctor, that was difficult, but I found a doctor in LA. He was such a sweetheart. He started shooting me with testosterone. I was very nervous about it, so worried about what I was going to look like, but I knew that without it I was going to commit suicide. I saw immediate changes. In one month I lost my period. The hair took a while but I started building muscle quickly. I went to ten different doctors about my breasts. That cost me a lot of money, but I got two jobs to pay for it. I eventually found a doctor who did, not a mastectomy, but a gynecomastia. I can’t tell you how pleased I am about my chest. Now I take testosterone every week. In Mexico it’s a lot cheaper and I can get it over the counter. I’ll inject it once a week for the rest of my life.

(…) I just wanted to make adult work because there was no one like me in that world. I never thought I was going to be an activist. I was never confident with my genitals but now I can embrace that part of my body that I hated for so long. And I want to share that with people. Not just people with issues with their genitals. My goal is to help make the world a better place for all of us. This hatred that is out there is very scary and I think that it is because people do not know how to deal when they see something different. Because we grow up being told this is how society is, when something does not fit that idea people freak out.

The visual co-existence of any combination of the anal (shit), the penile (piss, spunk) and the oral (spit) challenges further the masculine rigidity of ‘I’, which provokes what Calvin Thomas calls ‘male anxiety’ and catalyses the queer affinities of the imagery. (Cüneyt Çakirlar, íd)

The majority of the work is based on real life experiences that occurred in times of play, where the purpose was to explore desires and fantasies, but when you have baggage these releases become as much about pain as they do with pleasure. I don’t feel that expressing and experiencing pain is a bad thing, in fact, I think it is really healthy. When I delve into these past memories in these moments of play, the feelings that are released can be processed in a different way where reparations can be made. I’m not intentionally going out to reconstruct past memories. These experiences are drawn from me pursuing personal fantasy and my sense of what I desire, and sometimes that is rooted in memories from the past. I don’t know that any of us can escape our past and how it conditions and control us.Entrevista con Tricia Lawless en One Giant Arm.

The works put together begins to tell the story of dejected relations wrought upon the bodies of those pictured in the images. The nature of sexuality is that its boundaries are often very messy and undefined and that titillation is derived from transgressing these murky private spaces, both physical and mental. Pictured here are some representations of lonely or aggressive moments that form a broken narrative that speaks to elements of how I desire and how I want to be desired.

Although they are nominally about adult films, Sultan’s pictures are also interrogations of the photographic medium itself. He shows how photography can create the illusion of fantasy, and then he uses his pictures to dismantle those same fictions. Lush backyards are exposed as mere painted backdrops; even the beautiful, sexually uninhibited porn stars seem less exotic and more familiar when seen between takes, waiting for makeup or instructions from the director-especially when Sultan catches the actors in moments of contemplation, boredom, and fatigue.

By showing us the places where illusion falls apart, Sultan also calls our attention to the act of looking. A reflection on a sliding glass door, a sofa standing between us and the actors, or a strategically placed vase are all reminders of our status as onlookers, or interlopers. In some cases these obstacles almost completely obscure the scene. Unlike pornography, which is designed to be immediate and uncomplicated, Sultan’s images are complex. Sometimes humorous, sometimes erotic, they reward close examination.Corey Keller, Assistant Curator of Photography, San Francisco MoMA.

Boxers, Mission Hills, 1999

Sultan’s pictures present a documentary portrait of the industry, in which he steps back from the “action” to include the lights, cables and crews that frame it. Many pictures chronicle the bored hours spent by cast and crew members, just off set, waiting for their cue. Some capture porn stars in their curlers, or simply in sweats without make-up. Clark Buckner en Stretcher.